I’ll snap the ropes around my feet. Maybe I can find the floor. I don’t need my hands…
“Take a deep breath.” Her hand quieted his heaving chest. Another hand cupped the back of his skull, taking the weight off his neck. “Let your head fall back.”
An old memory came to him. His father supporting him in the water, showing him how to float. Trust the water, Mikhail.
He filled his lungs.
“Release your shoulders. Relax your hips.”
Trust the water.
He let go, and nothing hurt. He let go, and he was floating.
Alya dropped to her knees, torn between weeping and praying. Bless Natalia Faustin’s dancer’s genes. She’d never seen anything so beautiful as Mikhail Faustin bound.
Mikhail’s long, lean body, as flexible as it was powerful, hung from the ceiling, bent into a circle. His powerful neck arched back, utterly exposed. On the opposite side of the circle, his erection was rising in perfect counterpoint. Her intricate rope work enhanced and celebrated his every line.
For a moment, when he’d first gone up, she feared she’d lose him, but he’d found his equilibrium. He was a natural.
She didn’t know how long she stared at him, open mouthed, before she remembered what she was doing. He couldn’t stay up there for long.
On hands and knees she crawled over to his head. Though his every line spoke of peace, and she heard no echoes of panic, she checked his pulse. Slow and deep.
To remind him where he was, she circled her fingers behind his ears. A few tears escaped the mask to streak his brow. No doubt he was feeling much, however quietly.
“You’re okay?”
“Mmm.” His lips curved into a smile of heartbreaking beauty. She leaned in and gave him an upside down kiss, relishing the lazy sweetness of his mouth, but not allowing herself to linger there too long.
Her lips traveled up his neck. The blood beat strong under his taut skin. It reminded her that she was hungry. She let him feel that hunger. His languor vanished.
Smiling, she drew a nail along his neck, from the hollow of his jaw to the hollow of his throat, leaving a thin line of blood in her wake. He was officially on notice.
She’d woven the harness so that two rope-work diamonds isolated and outlined his pecs. Since that time, his small, flat nipples had flushed from pale pink to deep cherry red. Beautifully tempting. Securing his torso with her hands, she bit into the firm muscle above his left nipple
Like a designer drug, his blood passed directly into her bloodstream. Her eyes flew wide and she struggled to draw breath. It seemed impossible, but his blood had only grown more powerful since her first feeding.
A thin red rivulet ran down his chest and soaked into the rope. She wiped up the trail with her fingertip and licked it clean. Mmm. Mikhail. She leaned over and opened up the other side of his breast.
This was how she treated feeders—taking them one sip at a time, opening them over and over again until they begged for mercy or passed out. She thought being treated so might bring out his true dominant colors, but on the first bite, he’d only moaned softly. On the second, he actually relaxed into the bite. She knew if she took off his blindfold, she’d find his eyes unfocused and heavy lidded beneath.
It’s really true.
She wanted to remain suspicious, but the joy filling her could not be repressed. It made her giddy, buoyant, and utterly unable to concentrate. He was her mate. As no one else in the world could be. She covered his beautiful body with kisses, as she’d wanted to for so long.
Sensing the change in her, he stirred. His body responded to every stroke of her hand, twisting and turning in the ropes. She traced his ass and cupped his heavy balls. She nipped down the center line of his belly and lapped blood from his navel.
“You won’t come until I tell you. Swear it.”
“Swear it,” he said, his voice low and slurred.
The smell of his arousal, close up, drove her wild. Her pulse throbbed between her legs. She was wet. She imagined grinding herself against his mouth, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to ravish him, body and blood.
His cock stood fully erect, and as vulnerable as his neck. The broad head was the same rosy red as his nipples, and the veins purest purple. The rest of it was as alabaster as the rest of him. What little body hair he had was the color of burnished silver.
She cupped his shaft in her hands. He gasped, his chest swelling, his thighs tensing. She wrapped her tongue around the head, savoring his salt. His pulse beat powerfully under her fingers, like an invitation. She honed in on the dorsal vein with her tongue, and opened it at the base of his cock.
He cried out and arched high in the ropes, but he didn’t come. His hot blood sprayed against the back of her throat. The storm inside him swept through her. His blood begged to be consumed, at any cost. It took all her strength to back off and close the wound.
Legs wobbling, she made her way to his head. Mikhail was sucking in huge, heaving breaths.
“First I’m going to drink my fill of you,” she whispered in his ear. “Then I’m going to fuck you.”
His lips parted in anticipation.
Her incisors sharpened and she swooped down on his throat. She knew he couldn’t afford it, but her every instinct drove her to tap straight into his heart’s blood.
She mainlined his soul. The cellar, the ropes, all of it faded away. In her mind’s eye they embraced on a high promontory. The world spun around them in fiery colors. He kissed her throat, her mouth, her ear. Her hands coursed over the hard muscles of his back, down his strong flanks. His arms folded around her. Together they were safe. Together they were whole.
Her barriers began to give way.
All that mattered was his need. Her need. Their staggering need to be one.
“Hands.”
“Hands!”
“HANDS!”
Waking into the dungeon, she raised her head, licking her lips clean. Mikhail thrashed against his bonds like a shark in a net.
She understood. He had to hold her. He’d die if he couldn’t. And she’d die if he didn’t.
The pulleys tore from the ceiling just as she willed the bride rope to release his arms.
Mikhail spun in midair and landed on all fours, blind, rope spilling all around him. The next moment she was in his arms. Their mouths met, their kiss deep and searching.
He threw off his mask. She unclipped the lines from his chest. The harness would have to wait. They rolled across the floor.
Her shirt was in the way. Mikhail ripped it off. Yes.
He lapped her aching nipples through the lace of her bra. The lace abraded her tongue. No, his tongue. She smelled her wet skin through his nose. They were trembling, both of them, fevered.
Rolling. No one on top. One boot off, then the next. Trousers. Gone. Mikhail sliding down between her legs. Yes. His broad, strong tongue parting her flesh. She was flooding wet, crying out each time he stroked her.
He loved her sweet salt. She tasted herself. Yes, like that, that. Just like that. Knyaz tongue, devouring her.
His lips closed on her clit. His fingers thrust into her, curving them, teasing her deep nerves until her back bent with the sweetest agony and her heels ground into his back. Mikhail!
She came again, clutching his fingers once, twice, three times while a new surge of wetness spilled over his tongue. He lapped it up, knowing exactly what she wanted, how she wanted it, his brain hardwired to hers.